Pope Francis has sent a message to hundreds of faith and community leaders taking part in a national meeting of popular movements in Modesto, California, in the United States.

The encounter, taking place from February 16th to 18th, has been organised with the support of the Vatican’s new Dicastery for the Promotion of Integral Human Development, the U.S. Catholic Campaign for Human Development and the National Network of People Improving Communities through Organizing (PICO).

In the message, the Pope encourages participants to persevere with their commitment to fight for social justice, to work for environmental protection and to stand in solidarity with refugees and migrants.

Please find below the full English language text of Pope Francis’ message:

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

First of all, I would like to congratulate you for your effort in replicating on a national level the work being developed in the World Meetings of Popular Movements. By way of this letter, I want to encourage and strengthen each one of you, your organizations, and all who strive with you for “Land, Work and Housing,” the three T’s in Spanish: Tierra, Trabajo y Techo. I congratulate you for all that you are doing.

I would like to thank the Catholic Campaign for Human Development, its chairman Bishop David Talley, and the host Bishops Stephen Blaire, Armando Ochoa and Jaime Soto, for the wholehearted support they have offered to this meeting. Thank you, Cardinal Peter Turkson, for your continued support of popular movements from the new Dicastery for the Promotion of Integral Human Development. It makes me very happy to see you working together towards social justice! How I wish that such constructive energy would spread to all dioceses, because it builds bridges between peoples and individuals. These are bridges that can overcome the walls of exclusion, indifference, racism, and intolerance.

I would also like to highlight the work done by the PICO National Network and the organizations promoting this meeting. I learned that PICO stands for “People Improving Communities through Organizing”. What a great synthesis of the mission of popular movements: to work locally, side by side with your neighbors, organizing among yourselves, to make your communities thrive.

A few months ago in Rome, we talked at the third World Meeting of Popular Movements about walls and fear, about bridges and love. Without wanting to repeat myself, these issues do challenge our deepest values.

We know that none of these ills began yesterday. For some time, the crisis of the prevailing paradigm has confronted us. I am speaking of a system that causes enormous suffering to the human family, simultaneously assaulting people’s dignity and our Common Home in order to sustain the invisible tyranny of money that only guarantees the privileges of a few. “In our time humanity is experiencing a turning-point in its history.”

As Christians and all people of good will, it is for us to live and act at this moment. It is “a grave responsibility, since certain present realities, unless effectively dealt with, are capable of setting off processes of dehumanization which would then be hard to reverse.” These are signs of the times that we need to recognize in order to act. We have lost valuable time: time when we did not pay enough attention to these processes, time when we did not resolve these destructive realities. Thus the processes of dehumanization accelerate. The direction taken beyond this historic turning-point—the ways in which this worsening crisis gets resolved—will depend on people’s involvement and participation and, largely, on yourselves, the popular movements.

We should be neither paralyzed by fear nor shackled within the conflict. We have to acknowledge the danger but also the opportunity that every crisis brings in order to advance to a successful synthesis. In the Chinese language, which expresses the ancestral wisdom of that great people, the word “crisis” is comprised of two ideograms: Wēi, which represents “danger”, and Jī, which represents “opportunity”.

The grave danger is to disown our neighbors. When we do so, we deny their humanity and our own humanity without realizing it; we deny ourselves, and we deny the most important Commandments of Jesus. Herein lies the danger, the dehumanization. But here we also find an opportunity: that the light of the love of neighbor may illuminate the Earth with its stunning brightness like a lightning bolt in the dark; that it may wake us up and let true humanity burst through with authentic resistance, resilience and persistence.

The question that the lawyer asked Jesus in the Gospel of Luke (10:25-37) echoes in our ears today: “Who is my neighbor?” Who is that other whom we are to love as we love ourselves? Maybe the questioner expects a comfortable response in order to carry on with his life: “My relatives? My compatriots? My co-religionists? …” Maybe he wants Jesus to excuse us from the obligation of loving pagans or foreigners who at that time were considered unclean. This man wants a clear rule that allows him to classify others as “neighbor” and “non-neighbor”, as those who can become neighbors and those who cannot become neighbors.

Jesus responds with a parable which features two figures belonging to the elite of the day and a third figure, considered a foreigner, a pagan and unclean: the Samaritan. On the road from Jerusalem to Jericho, the priest and the Levite come upon a dying man, whom robbers have attacked, stripped and abandoned. In such situations the Law of the Lord imposes the duty to offer assistance, but both pass by without stopping. They were in a hurry. However, unlike these elite figures, the Samaritan stopped. Why him? As a Samaritan he was looked down upon, no one would have counted on him, and in any case he would have had his own commitments and things to do—yet when he saw the injured man, he did not pass by like the other two who were linked to the Temple, but “he saw him and had compassion on him” (v. 33). The Samaritan acts with true mercy: he binds up the man’s wounds, transports him to an inn, personally takes care of him, and provides for his upkeep. All this teaches us that compassion, love, is not a vague sentiment, but rather means taking care of the other to the point of personally paying for him. It means committing oneself to take all the necessary steps so as to “draw near to” the other to the point of identifying with him: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” This is the Lord’s Commandment.

The economic system that has the god of money at its center, and that sometimes acts with the brutality of the robbers in the parable, inflicts injuries that to a criminal degree have remained neglected. Globalized society frequently looks the other way with the pretence of innocence. Under the guise of what is politically correct or ideologically fashionable, one looks at those who suffer without touching them. But they are televised live; they are talked about in euphemisms and with apparent tolerance, but nothing is done systematically to heal the social wounds or to confront the structures that leave so many brothers and sisters by the wayside. This hypocritical attitude, so different from that of the Samaritan, manifests an absence of true commitment to humanity.

Sooner or later, the moral blindness of this indifference comes to light, like when a mirage dissipates. The wounds are there, they are a reality. The unemployment is real, the violence is real, the corruption is real, the identity crisis is real, the gutting of democracies is real. The system’s gangrene cannot be whitewashed forever because sooner or later the stench becomes too strong; and when it can no longer be denied, the same power that spawned this state of affairs sets about manipulating fear, insecurity, quarrels, and even people’s justified indignation, in order to shift the responsibility for all these ills onto a “non-neighbor”. I am not speaking of anyone in particular, I am speaking of a social and political process that flourishes in many parts of the world and poses a grave danger for humanity.

Jesus teaches us a different path. Do not classify others in order to see who is a neighbor and who is not. You can become neighbor to whomever you meet in need, and you will do so if you have compassion in your heart. That is to say, if you have that capacity to suffer with someone else. You must become a Samaritan. And then also become like the innkeeper at the end of the parable to whom the Samaritan entrusts the person who is suffering. Who is this innkeeper? It is the Church, the Christian community, people of compassion and solidarity, social organizations. It is us, it is you, to whom the Lord Jesus daily entrusts those who are afflicted in body and spirit, so that we can continue pouring out all of his immeasurable mercy and salvation upon them. Here are the roots of the authentic humanity that resists the dehumanization that wears the livery of indifference, hypocrisy, or intolerance.

I know that you have committed yourselves to fight for social justice, to defend our Sister Mother Earth and to stand alongside migrants. I want to reaffirm your choice and share two reflections in this regard.

First, the ecological crisis is real. “A very solid scientific consensus indicates that we are presently witnessing a disturbing warming of the climatic system.” Science is not the only form of knowledge, it is true. It is also true that science is not necessarily “neutral”—many times it conceals ideological views or economic interests. However, we also know what happens when we deny science and disregard the voice of Nature. I make my own everything that concerns us as Catholics. Let us not fall into denial. Time is running out. Let us act. I ask you again—all of you, people of all backgrounds including native people, pastors, political leaders—to defend Creation.

The other is a reflection that I shared at our most recent World Meeting of Popular Movements, and I feel is important to say it again: no people is criminal and no religion is terrorist. Christian terrorism does not exist, Jewish terrorism does not exist, and Muslim terrorism does not exist. They do not exist. No people is criminal or drug-trafficking or violent. “The poor and the poorer peoples are accused of violence yet, without equal opportunities, the different forms of aggression and conflict will find a fertile terrain for growth and will eventually explode.” There are fundamentalist and violent individuals in all peoples and religions—and with intolerant generalizations they become stronger because they feed on hate and xenophobia. By confronting terror with love, we work for peace.

I ask you for meekness and resolve to defend these principles. I ask you not to barter them lightly or apply them superficially. Like Saint Francis of Assisi, let us give everything of ourselves: where there is hatred, let us sow love; where there is injury, let us sow pardon; where there is discord, let us sow unity; where there is error, let us sow truth.

Please know that I pray for you, that I pray with you, and I ask God our Father to accompany and bless you. May He shower you with his love and protect you. I ask you to please pray for me too, and to carry on.

Cabrini High School’s Science Squad visited St. Rosalie School in Harvey, LA to introduce their students to some interesting science experiments.

Cabrini Science Instructors, Kathy Gosciniak and Lisa Surgi with the assistance of Cabrini students who are St. Rosalie alumnae Miranda Musacchia’17, and Angelle Falcon’17, led sixty members of Ms. Rotolo’s fifth grade science classes in a series of scientific tests on the properties of various toothpastes.

The Science Squad performed a series of physical tests on toothpastes, their ingredients and properties, including color/smell, abrasiveness, fluoride content, pH, and foaming properties. The young St. Rosalie “scientists” worked in pairs, utilizing stereoscopes, testing different brands of toothpaste. After the testing, the students shared their data with other pairs, compiling the data to create a more comprehensive database. The results of their research indicated there was little difference in the outcome among the five toothpaste brands tested, specifically not significant to justify the price differential among the brands.

“We received a positive response from Julie Rotolo the 4th grade teacher at St. Rosalie, as she was surprised with the amount of testing that could be done within one class period,” noted Cabrini AP Chemistry/Chemistry Instructor Kathy Gosciniak. She continued, “the St. Rosalie students seemed to really enjoy the activity, so we hope this simple demonstration will help to spark their curiosity and interest in science.”

Ann Smart, Science Department Head, led the campers on an adventure exploring the mysteries of solar power and plants during the Saturday morning camp. The campers started by threading UV light sensitive bead on ribbons to create necklaces. When exposed to UV light, the beads react by transforming from white to the colors of the spectrum, producing unique, rainbow colored necklaces. Campers also experimented with Sunprint paper, leaf prints, and flowers. Sunprints are filter paper dipped into chemicals to make the paper UV sensitive. Using stencils, the students exposed the paper to sunlight to form a blue and white print of the stencil.

During the plant section of the camp, the students created leaf prints by placing a leaf under a sheet of paper and gently rubbing the paper with colored pencil or crayon to show the leaf details. Campers also learned about plant reproduction by dissecting azaleas to identify the flowers’ petals, sepals, pistil, and stamen. For home study, the campers made “sock animals” by drawing faces on white socks, filling the socks with quick-growing grass seed and potting soil, and soaking the sock animals in water. In a few days, the sock animals will grow grass “hair,” allowing the campers to witness seed germination and plant growth.

“Best practices indicates that students grasp science and math concepts more readily when combined with practical application, so we incorporate theory and utility in all our STEM courses and activities, including our camps,” stated Smart. “The UV beads and sunprints allow the girls to grasp the existence and significance of UV light energy. When we introduce plant reproduction combined with the sunprints and the sock animals, the campers are able to witness how nature converts light, seeds, soil, and water into living, growing plants. It is an eye-opening moment for many youngsters as they realize for the first time all of the invisible and mysterious scientific processes occurring around them each and every day.”

18 Cabrini College students made 38 lobby visits Friday on behalf of our brothers and sisters around the world who are refugees fleeing war, experiencing climate change, or hoping to live a fully human life. So proud of these students, as well as several hundred Cabrini students in prior years, who have risen to the challenge to master difficult material, negotiate political differences, discover their core values, overcome nervousness, in order to speak truth to power.

Supporting the work of Catholic Relief Services and CRS University, they delivered 400 letters supporting CRS’s ‪#‎IAmClimateChange campaign and the Green Climate Fund. They spoke in support of $1 billion in additional funding for Syrian refugees, as well as to maintain or increase poverty-focused development assistance.

Beginning in 2008, students each semester have traveled to our nation’s Capitol to meet with our elected representatives in conjunction with Catholic Relief Services and the US Conference of Catholic Bishops to “Confront Global Poverty.” This year, Pope Francis has placed special attention on Caring for Our Common Home and climate change, and these students responded by discussing climate change with congress during the very weeks leaders from around the world are meeting in Paris to come to an historic agreement.

Similarly, in this contentious time, these students also bravely spoke about Syrian refugees and our duty to protect refugees seeking safety.

These students truly continue the work of St. Frances Cabrini, the patron saint of immigrants, after whom Cabrini College is named. #JusticeMatters

All are invited to a campus-wide presentation featuring Robert “Gus” Gusentine, visiting Woodrow Wilson Fellow

Water: Understanding the Challenge

Tuesday, Oct. 6, 6:30 p.m. Cabrini College, Mansion

During a weeklong residency, retired U.S. Navy captain and co-founder and chief operating officer for Global Sounding Inc. Robert “Gus” Gusentine will meet with Cabrini students, faculty, staff, and community partners to discuss sustainable access to water.

All are welcome to the free, campuswide presentation.

Gusentine’s residency is part of the Woodrow Wilson Fellows program which brings prominent leaders and nonacademic professionals to campuses across the U.S. for substantive dialogue with students and faculty members.

About Robert “Gus” Gusentine

Robert Gusentine is co-founder and chief operating officer for Global Sounding Inc., a private enterprise designed to assess and monitor the global fresh water supply to provide accurate information to governments, businesses, and the global community.

Gusentine serves on the Board of Directors for Elsie’s Hope, a 501 (c)(3) nonprofit corporation devoted to improving the living conditions of people around the world by providing sustainable access to clean water.

The Elsie’s Hope mission is to increase the number of water filtration systems in the field, support traditional social structures, and provide volunteers an opportunity to serve and support developing populations through boots-on-the-ground efforts.

Gusentine has 28 years of experience leading collaborative, high-performance teams of U.S. special operations forces in dynamic and challenging circumstances worldwide.

Serving in more than 30 countries, he has interfaced with senior foreign officials, U.S. and foreign ambassadors, and the U.S. inter-agency in countries key to U.S. national interests.

On Thursday, September 10th, the staffers at the Cabrini Cottage attended Cabrini College’s annual Involvement Fair. The event is focused on providing students, both incoming and veteran, with information about clubs and organizations that are available to them on campus. Our staff wanted to be sure that we maintained a presence throughout the event to welcome students and to become familiar with or be reintroduced to our MSC sponsored organizations.

As some Cabrini students are looking towards their post-graduate future, our staff was there to remind them of the opportunity to possibly volunteer with the Cabrini Mission Corps. Cabrini students were also reminded of the urgency of anti-human trafficking efforts and the awareness that is being raised through the Cabrini Action and Advocacy Coalition (CAAC).

Our staff, as well as having a presence at the fair, wanted to informally introduce the new CMC missioners to the college community – Ashley Block, Vanessa Miranda, Morgan Perry and Rachel Recolcolin.

Lastly, another of our goals was to create increasing familiarity of the Missionary Sisters as the religious sponsors of Cabrini College; to meet Sr. Christine Marie Baltas, MSC and Sr. Grace Waters, MSC whom we are blessed to have on our campus; as well to heighten awareness of the MSCs’ presence and ministries throughout the world.

THE POPE’S highly anticipated encyclical on the environment boldly tells the world that we need each other and we need nature. Among the many calls to action within Laudato Si’ is the call for diaglogue: “The majority of people living on our planet profess to be believers. This should spur religions to dialogue among themselves for the sake of protecting nature, defending the poor, and building networks of respect and fraternity.

“Dialogue among the various sciences is likewise needed,” says Francis, “since each can tend to become enclosed in its own language. . . . An open and respectful dialogue is also needed between the various ecological movements, among which ideological conflicts are not infrequently encountered.

“The gravity of the ecological crisis demands that we all look to the common good, embarking on a path of dialogue which demands patience, self-discipline and generosity, always keeping in mind that “realities are greater than ideas.”

This year, Cinco de Mayo was celebrated at Cabrini College with an environmental twist. Thousands of annuals were planted throughout campus assuring a riotous show of color next week just in time for Commencement.

Teams of faculty and staff volunteers wielded rakes, shovels, trowels and dug, mulched and planted throughout the campus for the Spring Beautification Day.

The Radnor campus is already showing off the efforts of the Fall Beautification Day when over 10,000 bulbs were planted.

Cabrini College lays claim to a beautiful campus forested with trees both young and old, a bustling wildlife presence, and students who call these grounds home. On Friday, April 17th, The Wolfington Center sponsored a conference to engage concerned citizens in the practice of entering into a healthy relationship with that natural world which men and women everywhere call home. Dr. John Burke, Cabrini College Professor of Religious Studies, organized the day-long event with a series of speakers, presenters, and dialogue amongst community members.

More than fifty attendees were treated to a thought-provoking piece by Dr. Burke to begin the day. The conversation concentrated on the relationship between the Catholic faith and environmental issues in our modern world. He reviewed the different themes of Catholic engagement with these issues ranging from the work of Cardinal Turkson to different encyclicals that display the varying facets of how the Church has mostly been on the stewardship and anthropocentric side of the environmental relationship. Dr. Burke then projected the steps which these people of faith ought to take in order for the concept of “green discipleship” to become genuine practice. His challenge to the Catholic Church was to view Catholic Social Teaching through an environmental lens as inhabitants in relationship with the natural world around it, rather than in a dominating relationship over the world.

Catholic perspectives were not the only ones heard throughout the day. Renowned Rabbi Arthur Waskow sparked the room with dialogue about the earth-oriented theology of Hebrew Scriptures. Rabbi Waskow spoke of how we need to change what we name ideas, both the idea of global warming and how we understand the name of God. Rabbi Waskow suggests that we start saying that we are scorching the earth, and recommends we start using the term global scorching in order to get across the extremity of the situation. He then exhorted us to think of the name of God as the breath of life, the breath that all living things breathe and that we all breathe reciprocally from each organism to the next: the trees breathe in what we breathe out, and we breathe in what the trees breathe out. Reconsidering our understanding of the name of God, will make us reconsider our relationship to our breath, and thus what we put out into the world to breathe.

Continuing with the theme of applying green practices to all aspects of our world, the conference broke into small groups with three presentations. Dr. Carrie Nielsen, Cabrini College associate professor of Biology, shared the science of climate change is making people around the world sick. Global warming (or scorching if we abide by Rabbi Waskows suggestion) often is associated with nature and the harm we are doing to nature, or the ice caps, or the polar bears at the ice caps. However, Dr. Nielsen shows that global warming has killed, and will continue to kill people until something is done. Dr. Nielsen also gave groups time to reflect and come up with ideas to help change our stereotypical understanding of global warming to add a human element.

Chuck Marshall, joining from Central Baptist Church, led his group through the history of his church becoming a carbon neutral building and institution, the processes they went through to get to that level, and suggestions of what they could do further, and what other buildings and institutes could do in order to get to neutral emissions.

Finally, as a continuation of his larger presentation, Rabbi Arthur Waskow spoke about the application of Hebrew Scriptures in today’s ecological world, and specifically how we can allocate our money responsibly, in order to help maintain a more ecologically friendly world.

Through interfaith dialogue and a shared passion to embody genuine care for God’s creation, this gathering offered a deepened the sense of responsibility for this beautiful campus which so many people call home. This small gathering for Cabrini College is one big step forward to educating the hearts of the world around it. For as St. Francis of Assisi says, “A single sunbeam is enough to drive away many shadows.”